I see you, Indiana. The Hoosiers program, with all of its storied tradition, has spent a decade in the dumps. But after Saturday's dramatic win over Kentucky, we can officially say it: Indiana basketball is back.
Bob Knight made his unceremonious exit from Bloomington in 2000, and his replacement, Mike Davis, won 67 games and made it to an NCAA finals over his first three years at the helm of the Hoosiers. But in the 2003-2004 season was Bad News Bears, as IU struggled to a 14-15 record, and it's been all mediocrity and/or disgrace ever since. Kelvin Sampson totally ruined everything in his two years with Indiana, and ever since, Tom Crean has struggled to gain traction for a Hoosiers comeback.
Until now, that is.
Indiana raced out this year to a 5-0 record that was not impressive for who they beat but how they beat them, then took down Butler and got a nice road win over North Carolina State in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.
All that was reason for cautious optimism that perhaps Crean had the team ready to roll, but everyone was looking forward to last Saturday's Kentucky game and next Saturday's Notre Dame game to see what these Hoosiers were really made of. Indiana has been so bad for the past few years that no matter how many potentially good signs we thought we might have seen, the Hoosiers were in believe-it-when-we-see-it mode.
Indiana basketball is one of the best traditions in college sports. Bloomington isn't the first place you'd expect to house such basketball excellence. It's a sleepy midwestern college town just outside of Nowheresville, but it's the flagship athletic program of a strangely basketball-obsessed state, and it is a good things -- a very good thing -- for college basketball to see Assembly Hall rocking again.
Just check out what happened in one Indiana sports bar when that shot went down. Pretty awesome, you guys.
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